The Prodigal Spy (30 page)

His father opened his eyes and smiled. “Nicku,” he whispered. He reached up to smooth Nick’s hair back from his forehead, the old gesture. “Now you tuck me in.”

Nick nodded, feeling his father’s hand slip back.

“Are you all right now?” he said.

His father smiled, closing his eyes. “As snug as a bug in a rug.”

THE DRIVE BACK was long, slowed by patches of lowlying fog and wet mist that condensed on the windshield, forcing him to lean forward to make out the road. Occasionally tiny lights appeared in the darkness, like fireflies coming out of the woods, then joined the halting stream of cars inching toward Prague. He hadn’t expected traffic. In town, the streets had been almost empty, conduits for trams, but here in the country he saw that the cars had only been in hiding, parked in secret pockets of free weekend air.

Molly was restless, fiddling with the heater, then turning the radio knob to scratchy bursts of Czech that faded in and out until, fed up, she snapped it off and stared out the window. He could feel her next to him, bottled up, wanting to talk but not knowing how to start. He fixed his eyes on the road, where there were only red taillights, not old men with stories, a frail arm reaching up to him from the bed. Now she was rummaging through her bag, pulling things out as she dug deeper, crinkling paper, then finally extracting a thin, misshapen cigarette.

“Don’t say a word,” she said, lighting it. “Just don’t.” She drew on it deeply, and the smell of dope filled the car.

“I thought you left that in Austria.”

“I lied.” She rolled down the window, letting the smell escape into the air, shivering a little at the sudden chill. “Don’t worry. I just kept one. For a rainy day.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see police lights, but there was only the dark. He rolled down his window a little, creating a draft. “What report?” he said finally.

She sighed. “The D.C. police report, from the night she died. I asked to see it.”

Nick looked at her. “Just a reporter doing her job,” he said, still angry. “Is that the story you’re writing? You want to make him a killer too? Great.”

“He did kill her,” she said quickly, then looked away, her voice apologetic now. “I’m not writing anything. I just said that.”

“Then why—”

She took another drag, stalling, then exhaled slowly. “Okay. She was my aunt. Rosemary Cochrane. My mother’s sister. That’s how I knew who he was. You’re not the only one who—” She stopped, looking over at him. “I know. I should have told you. I was going to. And then, things changed, and I thought, let it go. What’s the good? She’s dead. Why upset everything? Let him take it with him. And all the time here he is, packing his bags.”

Nick said nothing, too stunned to reply.

“I’m not writing anything.” she said again. “It was personal, that’s all.” For a minute there was no sound but the swish of the tires. Then she reached over and handed him the joint, a peace offering.

“Want a hit?” she said, and suddenly he did, a piece of the world they’d left at the border. He extended his right hand, eyes still on the road, and felt her place the joint in the V of his fingers. He drew on it, aware of the quick glare at the tip, then held the smoke in his lungs. They passed it back and forth, still not saying anything, until he felt it grow hot in his fingers.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’m driving.” He saw her place the end between the tips of her fingers and finish it with sharp intakes of breath.

“There. Clean,” she said, flicking it out the window.

“Feel better?”

“No. But I will,” she said. “Give it a few minutes.” But he could feel it already, moving through him with his blood, relaxing and buoyant at the same time. He eased into it, letting his mind drift with the mist on the road.

“God,” Molly said, leaning back in her seat, “that dinner.” He said nothing, listening to another conversation inside his head.

“It’s interesting, the way he does it,” she said slowly.

“Does what?”

“Tells the story. It’s all there, isn’t it? All the way to Canada. Everything but the first stop.”

Nick let a minute pass, watching the road. “Were you close?”

“No, I never knew her. I mean, I must have known her, but I don’t remember. We never talked about it. You know, the one unforgivable sin.”

“But what was she like?”

“Well, let’s see. Also born Bronxville. She wanted to be a singer.”

“Really? An opera singer?”

“A band singer. You know, nightclubs and things. She had this picture–one of those professional pictures they put in delis? ”Best wishes to Mel.“ Like that. She’s got this big smile and a flower in her hair. All
set
, you know? I never heard that she actually sang anywhere, though. She probably just did it to freak out my grandparents. Nightclubs. I
mean
.”

“Pretty radical.”

“It was, in a way. She was always doing that. Of course, it wasn’t hard with them. My grandfather got on a train in the morning and walked through the door at six-twenty every day of his life. They wanted her to go to Manhattanville –where else?–and when she went to NYU there was this big fight, and the next thing you know she’s waiting tables for money and–do you really want to hear this?”

Nick nodded.

“Of course, I got most of this from my grandmother, so consider the source. She
still
blamed NYU, right to the end. All those ‘undesirable influences’–that was the phrase. Anyway, there was Aunt Rosemary, waiting tables and being influenced. Funny, isn’t it? In a way my grandmother was right. I mean, that must have been when she–became political.”

“Became a Communist, you mean,” Nick said, saying it.

“If she was. An actual Communist, in the party. They never said that.” She stopped. “Talk about splitting hairs.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then she dropped out of school and went to Washington. She was a secretary for a while, I think. During the war. And then–well, the rest you know.”

“Except we don’t.”

“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I used to think about it, the way kids do. We had this box in the attic, you know, with the Mel picture in it, and I’d go through it, making up stories about her. Then I put the picture up in my room and my mother had a fit. I suppose she thought I’d turn out the same way.”

“What, a Communist?”

“No, man-crazy. She always thought that was the start of all the trouble.”

“What made her think that?”

“Oh, there’s always a man.” She waved her hand. “She had to tell herself something. The more she didn’t talk about what happened, the more it was there. You know when she told me? When they sent the suitcase back. The one she had in the hotel. I guess the police took it as evidence and then, months later, out of the blue, they delivered it and my mother had to explain it to me. She just sat there crying, and I guess that must have upset me, her crying, because that’s when she told me.”

“What was in it?”

“Nothing. You know, just overnight stuff–cosmetics, a nightgown. Nothing. It was the fact of it. And because they’d torn it all up. The lining was sliced–I guess they were looking for secret messages or something–and they never even apologized. She just sat on the couch with this beat-up bag and that was her sister, what was left of her, and—”

A nightgown, Nick thought. Planning to spend the night. A bag packed to meet someone.

“Anyway, that was Rosemary,” Molly said. “Public Enemy. Part of the Communist conspiracy. Remember that, in school? I thought they were talking about
her
. And I used to think, I know one but you don’t have to worry about her. She turned herself in.”

“Except she didn’t.”

“According to him.”

“But why would she?” Nick said, brooding. The others who talked, they were all tied up in the politics of it.

“You know, you lose one faith and you replace it with the opposite. And then the opposite has to destroy the first. They really
did
believe a conspiracy was threatening the country, because they used to believe in it themselves. So in some crazy way it was their duty to expose it, now that they were on the other side. But that doesn’t sound like her at all. Not from your description. How many nightclub singers have a problem with apostasy?”

She looked at him, the helpless beginning of a smile. “You know, I’ve never heard that word used before. In speech. Only in print. Is that how it’s pronounced?”

“You don’t want to talk about this.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe she had political convictions, I don’t know. What are they, anyway? What would you do to stop the war? Besides rallies and things. Suppose there was a way. What would you do? Name names? Maybe it wouldn’t seem like much if you really thought they were the enemy. Maybe you’re right–maybe she didn’t care about any of that. I don’t know. Maybe she just wanted a little attention. Anyway, she got it.” She paused. “While he was on his way to Canada.”

“You still think he’s lying.”

She said nothing, as if she had to think about it, then sat up and reached for a cigarette. “Yes.” He watched her light it, her movements stretched in time by the dope. “Now I know it.”

“How?”

“Remember that drive in the snow? All the little details. How he was dying for a smoke but he left his lighter behind?”

“So?”

“So they found it in the hotel room.
That’s
where he left it–it’s in the report. He still doesn’t know. I was watching. He probably still thinks he left it at home.” She turned to him. “He was there, Nick.”

“How do they know it was his?”

“They didn’t use these,” she said, indicating the disposable plastic lighter in her hand. “They had real lighters. With initials. W.K.”

“And O.K.,” he said softly.

She looked at him, puzzled.

“My mother. It was from her. She was always giving him stuff like that.” He stared at the road. “That still doesn’t mean he was there.”

“Have it your way. How else would it get there?”

“Somebody could have planted it.”

“Do you really think that’s likely?” she said quietly.

“No.” He remembered it in his father’s hand, shiny, always with him, like the wave in his hair.

“He was there,” she said, an end to it.

“That still doesn’t mean he killed her. I don’t believe it.”

“You mean you don’t want to.”

“Do you?”

“Want to? No. But that doesn’t change things.” She paused, biting her lip in thought. “I’ll give you this, though. I sat there and I thought, could he really do that? It doesn’t feel right.”

“How is it supposed to feel?”

“I don’t know. Threatening. But he’s not.”

“No.”

“Whatever that’s worth. Maybe that’s how they get away with it. They stop believing it themselves. So there’s nothing to pick up on.”

“Killer vibes.”

“I know, it sounds stupid. But there should be
something
. A little radar blip, you know? A little ping.”

“A little ping.”

She looked at him, then tossed her cigarette out the window and slumped down in her seat, burrowing in. “You’re right. It’s stupid. I mean, he was there. We know that. It’s just—”

“What?”

She shook her head. “Her lover. I can’t see them together.”

Nick was quiet, following his own thought, a blip across the screen.

“They weren’t together,” he said finally, sure. “He was devoted to my mother.”

“Yeah. So was mine. Every time he came back. Anyway, I don’t mean him. I mean her. He wasn’t her type. Not –I don’t know–flashy enough.”

Nick thought of him changing upstairs, the pale, slack skin. “No, he’s not flashy.”

“Still. People change.”

“No, they don’t.”

By the time they got to town they were alone again; the other cars had melted away into the dark edges of the city as mysteriously as they had come. The streets were deserted, wet cobblestones cut by the bumpy tram rails, whose metal caught their headlights and gleamed back at them through the mist. Dim pools of yellow light from the street lamps. It was, finally, the Prague of his imagination, Kafka’s maze of alleys and looming towers, spires poking suddenly through the fog. They drove along the river, Hradčany somewhere off to the right, then turned into streets where nothing was visible beyond the reach of the car’s lights and, still lulled by the dope, Nick felt that he had begun driving through his own mind, one confusing turn after another, going in circles. How could anyone live here? When they reached Wenceslas, the empty, lighted tram that appeared clanging in front of them seemed to come out of a dream.

The
parky
stalls were closed but the Alcron was still awake, the doorman leaping from the bright door as if he’d been waiting for them. The lobby was empty. Nick saw the bellhop and desk clerk glance up. The drug was wearing off, leaving only a pleasant tiredness and now the familiar sensation that everyone was watching them. For an instant he stopped, then smiled to himself. They
were
being watched; it was what people did here. Did they notice he was walking slowly? Then the bellhop yawned, and he saw that his cover would be exhaustion. It was only eleven, but everyone seemed ready for bed.

“A long day, Pan Warren,” the clerk said, handing him the key. “Not so nice for Karlovy Vary, the weather.”

Was he checking up or only being polite?

“You took the waters?”

Nick looked at him blankly, but Molly said, “Why do the glasses have those pipestems?”

“Pipestems? Ah, like a
pipe
, yes. To drink in. For the minerals, you see. To get past the teeth. Otherwise they would stain.”

“Ah,” Molly said. “Well, goodnight.”

The desk clerk smiled and bowed at them, satisfied.

“That was good,” Nick said as they crossed to the elevator.

“It’s the only thing I remembered about the place, those funny little glasses. Thank God. Now he can put it in his report. Our day at Karlsbad.”

Nick stopped. “But it wouldn’t be true. I mean, just because something’s in a report. There it is in black and white, but we were never there.”

Molly looked at him for an instant, then lowered her eyes. “But the lighter was.”